


Communal Gardening

by xx_bittersweet_merlin



Series: founders era [8]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, M/M, Parody, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-04-19 04:28:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14229279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xx_bittersweet_merlin/pseuds/xx_bittersweet_merlin
Summary: a dumb modern au parody that spawned from a late night conversation with byelawliet. i apologize for this and i have no excuse don't judge me(Madara is a photographer helping his brother through college, Mito is his Very Done newlywed friend, Izuna keeps stalking an aquarium worker, and Hashirama is the friend he hasn't seen in ten years, plus mysterious gardens keep popping up in the city.)





	1. down with the bourgeois

“You know, aniki,” Izuna’s amused voice said from his phone, “burning the evidence won’t erase the digital copies I have.”

“Shut up,” Madara hissed in his phone’s direction, balling up another of the photos in his hand and throwing it into the fire in his sink. They were large prints, eleven-by-sixteens, in vivid color, no doubt printed from that expensive printer in Izuna’s graphic design class, and they deserved to be destroyed. “You didn’t say you were sending me some.”

“I always send you a copy of your photoshoots!” Izuna exclaimed, a note of fake flabbergasted surprise in his voice, as if he honestly thought Madara would want these monstrosities. “How else would I thank you?”

“By never bringing it up again?”

“And here I thought you had such a great time doing a favor for your little brother.”

“I agreed to do it under the condition we would never speak of it,” Madara snapped out, sounding a little more irritated than he really was. He knew it was just Izuna’s way to do things like this, but he couldn’t help but be annoyed. “Someone could have seen them!”

“You live alone,” Izuna countered, sounding honestly confused.

“Well…someone could have taken my mail.”

He could hear the eyeroll in his brother’s voice. “Yes, and I’m sure they would have enjoyed it greatly. Come on, I didn’t send you the ones with your face in it.” He was pouting, now. “I kept those to give you in person.”

“You’re an evil child,” Madara told him, turning on his faucet and dousing the fire. He grimaced as smoke rose from the ashes still. “You know I’m not a model. I don’t know why you keep dragging me into these things.”

“Because!” Izuna’s tone lost the pout and became chipper again. “It’s not like you’re famous or anything, but people love to get the chance to have an Uchiha model their products.”

“Why didn’t you take it, then?”

Izuna shrugged on the other end of the line. “I was busy.” He heard Madara sigh. “Come on, you did have fun, didn’t you?”

There was a small pause. He could envision Madara in his mind, expression going blank for a moment before he lowered his eyes to the ground in thought. “Well, yes,” he said after a moment. “But still. You can’t just _mail_ those things to me. At least send it through something encrypted.”

Izuna snickered. “All right, all right, I’ve learned my lesson,” he said, rocking back in his seat and propping his feet up on the table in the computer lab he sat in. Normally, his professor was a hardass to anyone who dared, but the lab was empty seeing as it was almost eleven o’clock at night. He watched the progress bar on his computer inch forward as his project rendered and shoved some of the skittles he’d gotten from the vending machine down the hall into his mouth. “I’ll give you a USB when I see you.”

“ _Thank_ you,” Madara sighed in exasperation, picking up his phone from where he’d set it on the counter and turning the speaker off as he raised it to his ear. “I have no need for prints anyway.”

“Because you threatened your last date with a fire extinguisher,” Izuna shot back.

“Shut up! He said Tatsumaki was annoying!”

“I know, I know! You’ve already explained it to me. Several times. I’m just saying, you don’t have anyone to give your sexy photos to right now but hey, maybe you should save them.”

Madara caught sight of a photo he’d missed, laying innocuously on his countertop, and wrinkled his nose. “Right. Because that’s going to happen.”

Izuna tittered. “You should just take a date I set up.”

“You’re not seeing anyone either right now, you know.”

“Oh, believe me, _I know_ ,” Izuna huffed, just to hear his brother let out a disgusted groan. “But I’m also busier than you. Do you even _know_ how many hours I’m taking this semester?”

“Of course I know. You only mention it every other conversation. Did you know Watatsumi started mimicking you yesterday? You weren’t even here.”

“That must mean she likes me,” Izuna said brightly, grinning at the way Madara let out a dissatisfied little grumble.

Madara stepped out of his kitchenette and into his front room. The morning newspaper was still lying against the counter from where he’d pushed it when he walked through the door and neglected to pick it up. He didn’t know why it always ended up at his door instead of in his mailbox in the lobby, but it was irritating.

He picked up the pasta salad he’d stopped eating to go downstairs and get the mail upon realizing he’d forgotten to when he got home. It was bland and tasteless and generally horrible, but he had no cooking skills whatsoever and one time he’d almost lit himself on fire turning his stove on, so he was content with whatever he could shove in his microwave. God help him if it ever malfunctioned.

“That’s only because you always bring her kiwi.”

“Well _someone_ has to be the fun uncle who brings treats and cycles through manstresses.”

Madara groaned. “Please never say manstress ever again.”

“Paramours.”

“Marginally better.”

Madara flicked on his television and lowered the volume. As rarely as he used it, it did provide something entertaining for his eyes to focus on when Izuna called. The news headline was something about another garden that had popped up in a highway median overnight; city workers were pulling the plants up as a line of protestors all in green clothing held up signs behind a line of construction horses. They’d had to close a lane to do it, and the newscaster was rambling on about how late night traffic-goers were angry about the inconvenience. He didn’t know what the point was; tomatoes were more useful than that ugly grass they put down, anyway.

“How is Tatsumaki, anyway?” Izuna asked, closing down the programs on his computer. He’d finished and uploaded his project with barely ten minutes to spare, and all he could focus on now was going home and collapsing into bed.

Madara frowned as the newscaster covered one ear and spoke louder to be heard over the protestors’ shouts. Their signs were adorned with peace signs and earth illustrations and words such as _free food for all_. He lowered the volume again. “Inuzuka said she must’ve just eaten something that didn’t agree with her. She’s fine today. I threw out the bag of food I was using.”

“Ah, that’s good.” Izuna sighed as he dumped his belongings haphazardly into his messenger bag and started speed-walking for the door. “She is my favorite little tornado of fury.”

“I think she sensed it when Tenjin called her annoying. I heard her start shrieking from the other room.”

“Give her a kiss for me.” Izuna walked down the hall of his art building to the elevator and stepped inside. “I’m getting in the elevator so it’ll probably cut out. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

Madara rolled his eyes. He doubted there was much his brother _wouldn’t_ do. “Good night, Izuna.”

He hung up and tossed his phone onto the love seat to the left of his couch. He glanced down at his pasta and grimaced before setting it back on the table and reclining back into the couch cushions. He had no work the next day, and it left him with hardly anything to do and thus in a sour mood. He kept an odd schedule compared to the other Uchiha, many of which still worked at the family company and others who had more regular day jobs, and his few friends outside of it were preoccupied: Mito was on her honeymoon and he didn’t feel as though he knew Inoue or that Nara friend of Naori’s all that well, he only saw them in group outings.

Sighing, he reached for the remote and turned up the volume again.

“-this is identical to two other incidents that happened just this week in other parts of the city. Environmental activists have criticized the removal of the gardens, citing the fact that it’s a waste of resources to remove something that could prove valuable, compared to the standard grass the city embeds in their public spaces that provides little to none nutritional value. The Mayor has-”

Madara smirked in amusement and flicked the television off. Of course _officials_ were unhappy about something that might benefit the poor degenerates who’d been unfortunate enough to exist in their city without money. The common man would never find any sympathy from those in government.

He rolled onto his back and stretched out. Perhaps he’d go down and photograph one of the locations that wasn’t on a busy highway. (Now that he thought about it, he had no idea how whoever had done it had done it without being seen, and that somehow made it all the more amusing.) Public incidents always did make for great shots nestled in countless images taken at the scene. He’d photographed a protest downtown, once- what had they been protesting? Something to do with the hospital, he imagined- and among various uninteresting photos of the crowd shouting and yelling, he’d gotten a gem of a pink-haired girl waving a sign about healthcare rights. He vaguely remembered that same girl was in medical school at the moment and had used his image in some sort of essay about her passion for medicine that had gotten her into her school.

It wouldn’t hurt to drive around a bit, either. He’d hardly gotten the chance to shoot for fun lately.

He rocked up and swung off the couch. His spare bedroom was right beside his own, lined on both sides by cages that stretched from wall to wall, though the one on the right was empty since his last bird had passed away. He reached into the one that housed Watatsumi and Tatsumaki and gently took the smaller finch in his hand, pressing a feather-light kiss to the top of her head as she cheeped at him. “Good night.”

Watatsumi blinked at him a few times. “Good night,” she mimicked, and Madara smirked before closing the cage door. He’d been warned about housing a budgie and a finch together, but the two had never done so much as argue over food; Watatsumi seemed to take Tatsumaki under her wing both literally and figuratively, considering he’d seen them perched together often.

He retrieved his phone and retired to bed. It set his mind at ease, some, to check his email and messages before bed to make sure there wasn’t some emergency or catastrophe unfolding with any of his family; Izuna also had a habit of late-night tweeting, and it ensured him that his brother had made it back to his apartment safely. It was the same distance from the art building as the campus dorms were but Madara still worried over him walking alone at night. Sure enough, there was an update from his brother on his feed.

                                                                       

Madara pondered on whether to dignify that with a response before liking the tweet and turning his phone off. He knew it would drive Izuna crazy; his little brother knew that there was a fifty-fifty chance of him doing that because he had done it, or because he hadn’t and was mocking him.

His phone buzzed, once, notifying him of a notification before it went silent as the clock turned to midnight and it went into do not disturb mode. Madara went to sleep with a smile on his face and the knowledge that he’d suitably ruffled Izuna’s feathers in return for that photo stunt.

* * *

 

Madara was exactly right: the park that was the scene of the crime for one of the other garden incidents was bustling when he arrived in the morning. The crowd had reached such a size that police had arrived and taped off the area, though they did little more than yell their protests and wave their signs. Madara kept one wary eye on the officers still.

He watched city workers in orange overalls pull up the plants that had appeared in the park, somehow flourishing despite being transferred so quickly. He could see growing cabbages and cucumbers and what looked like herbs, even, and his mouth twisted at the blatant waste of food. There had been times when he was younger when he’d gone hungry to ensure his brothers ate and his family would have happily taken what was being thrown into wheelbarrows like garbage. Even he could see that the rather…animated people there had a point.

He took out a lens with a longer zoom and made sure to get several shots of the plants being carted away. He turned back to the crowd after a few minutes, snapping pictures as he moved from one end of the park to the other.

Something tugged at his pant leg. Pausing, he glanced down and found a small girl standing beside him, looking up at him with wide, dark eyes. Her brown hair was pulled into pigtails and she held a drooping sign in one hand. “Um…sir?”

Madara had always had a soft spot for children. “Yes?” he asked, kneeling down and smiling. He knew he could scare young ones off if he didn’t try to look pleasant.

“I jus’ wanted to say your camera’s really cool,” she said, flushing now that she had his attention and glancing down at her shoes.

“Well, thank you.” Grinning, he pulled his camera strap from over his head and held it at a lower level. “Why don’t you try it?”

Her head shot up as her eyes went even wider. “Really?” she exclaimed, and looked at it excitedly when he nodded. She put her eye up to the viewfinder and put both hands on the camera body; he didn’t remove his, knowing it was too heavy for her. He flicked the exposure mode to automatic and flicked the flash into place as she looked for the shutter button.

“Right here,” he said, tapping it. She followed the sound and pressed down.

She squealed when the camera snapped a photo and the flash went off. Leaping a good three inches, she stared at it with a gap-toothed grin as the display lit up with the image. “That’s so cool!”

She reminded Madara of his little brothers when he’d been younger. They always looked at everything he did with wonder and awe, before turning into little mongrels who lived to hassle him. “Here,” he said, reaching into his camera bag. He pulled out a small point-and-shoot Izuna used for quick photos at tourist locations that he hadn’t used for over a month and had somehow ended up in Madara’s things. He placed it into her hands. “This is a little different from mine, but you can take some of your own now.”

“R-really? Momma says I shouldn’t take things from people I dunno,” she said, biting her lip as she stared at it.

“Is she here?”

“Yeah, she told me I could come over.” A small pout took over the girl’s lips as she looked to be weighing her wants. “As long as she watched.”

Madara repressed a chuckle. “Well, tell her I said photographers have to look out for each other.” He ruffled her hair and returned his strap to around his neck. “Don’t run with it.”

For a moment all she did was look at him, before a wide grin split her face. “Thank you, sir! Can I take a picture of you?”

“Of course. I’d be happy to be your first model.” Madara reached down and showed her how to turn it on, and she giddily ran a few steps from him and raised it to her face. He lowered one knee to the ground and set his elbow on the other, leaning on his hand, and gave the camera the smile he used for advertisements.

She looked down at the display when the shutter had gone off and beamed. After a moment of looking at the thing, she seemed to realize exactly what color it was. “It’s pink!”

“That it is,” Madara agreed, amused. He stood up and rearranged his own camera and bag. “If it stops working, just give it to your mother. She’ll be able to fix it.”

She looked up at him with shining eyes and beamed again. “Thank you, sir!” she yelled as she turned and started to run back to who he assumed was her mother waiting for her.

“Remember what I said,” he called out, inwardly snickering when she screeched to a stop and continued forward at a walk.

Feeling a bit tickled, he smirked to himself and started walking to where he’d parked his car. He’d gotten enough pictures for the day.

* * *

 

“Hey, Madara.”

“What.”

“Why do you sound so distant?”

“I’m driving.”

“Gasp! You can’t text and drive!”

“This is a verbal conversation, and stop saying your sound effects.”

Izuna sniffed daintily as he rammed his foot into the base of the vending machine holding his peanut butter cookies hostage. He knew the ones in the art building were notorious for eating coins and refusing to give their suffering patrons their only sustenance, but walking across the street to the business center just for a cheap snack was simply too much work.

The machines were in a creepy hallway, too, rundown and dirty and obviously with no one taking care of it, with a stairwell at the back no one ever went up. It was unsettling but familiar regardless.

“You know when Naori had that friend in a bōsōzoku gang who knew that friend in the nursing department who had a camera for cheap she hooked you up with back in the day?”

Madara raised an eyebrow as he maneuvered through traffic. That had been a long time ago, and sometimes he couldn’t fathom how Izuna kept these things straight. “Yes?”

“Turns out it was _stolen_ ,” Izuna emphasized, faking the scandal in his voice. “Can you believe that?”

Madara rolled his eyes. “Lots of things are stolen, Izuna.” And he’d bought that camera under the table anyway, as well as already given it away, so it wasn’t as if he had any reason to worry.

“It turns out,” Izuna continued, ignoring him, and again Madara wondered just where he got this information, “she had a cousin who worked in this shopping mall who had a friend in the yakuza who she originally left a window unlocked to help let in to steal shit, and he left the camera at her place by accident and neither noticed so she decided to just pawn it off.”

“Why exactly am I interested in this story?”

“Why _wouldn’t_ you be?” Izuna prodded, finally releasing his cookies from the claws of the devil and retreating out of the creepy hallway. “You came close to a brush with crime, aniki.”

Madara rolled his eyes again. “We all have,” he said, because there had been several incidents at their various schools involving illegal burning. He’d once stolen a parakeet from his principal because he thought it was being mistreated (and it _was_ , in an enclosure that small, he would insist to his dying day).

“By the way, did you give Tatsumaki a kiss for me?”

“Perhaps,” Madara replied vaguely. He smirked when he heard the scowl slip into Izuna’s voice.

“You better have!”

“What, do you think I don’t give my birds enough affection?”

“You can never have too much!”

“They’re doing just fine,” Madara said as he pulled into a parking spot by the curb, eyeing the parking meter distastefully. Somehow, he always seemed to run over no matter how hard he tried to avoid it. He stepped out of the car, grimacing at the way it was warmer within; his air conditioner had been broken for about a month. He groped around in his bag for one of the fake parking tickets he printed out and stuffed it into his windshield. “Was there anything else you desperately needed to convey? I’m about to get coffee.”

Izuna’s pout was audible. “No, I just called to tell you about your old stolen probably wanted camera. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, aniki.”

Madara rolled his eyes for a third time and hung up as he stepped onto the sidewalk. His eyes were instantly assaulted by the hideousness of a chain coffee shop, commercialized propaganda about their ‘old-fashioned’ methods and how much they cared for their customers everywhere in sight; it was ugly, but he couldn’t function without caffeine.

The bell over the door rang as he stepped inside. “Welcome to Starbucks!” someone called cheerily, and he wrinkled his nose in reply.

He waited his turn in line and stepped up to the counter, pausing when he saw a familiar face behind it. “Obito,” he greeted, delighted to see his dumb little teenage nephew.

Obito groaned when he saw him. “What do you want?” he asked, tone bordering on desperate.

“Now, now, is that any way to treat a paying customer?”

Obito twitched and glared at him, speaking through gritted teeth. He looked ridiculous in the green uniform and a black cap that didn’t do anything nice for his hair. “What would you like today, _sir_?”

“Hmm…” Madara tapped his chin as he stood there, watching the twitch in Obito’s eyebrow grow bigger. “I’ll have a caramel macchiato, venti, skim, extra shot, extra-hot, extra-whip, with extra sugar.”

Obito’s hands tightened on the counter. He ground his teeth together, looking as if he wanted nothing more than to leap over the counter and strangle him, and put on a frightening smile as the customers behind Madara started to stare. “Coming right up…sir,” he whispered. His eyes were those of a person who was dead inside.

Madara exited the store in a much better mood than before, smirking as he walked towards his car and not caring that his cup read _Nyadara_. It was Obito’s fault for deigning to work at a chain restaurant, he thought, especially one that let their customers control their drink temperature.

He was almost to his vehicle when a hand grasped his elbow. “Excuse me,” a voice said from behind, making him draw up.

Madara wheeled around, and was instantly startled by the beauty of a man staring at him. He jumped and his coffee slipped out of his grasp, making him jump again to avoid the splatter as it hit the sidewalk.

The stranger let out a yelp of surprise and dodged the spill. He wore plain brown dress pants and a green shirt with enough buttons open to give Madara a nice view of his collarbone. “I am _so sorry_ ,” he exclaimed, expression twisting with guilt as he put his hands on Madara’s arms and looked down at his feet, as if to ensure he hadn’t been burned, moving them away from the coffee. “I didn’t mean to startle you!”

“Y- you didn’t,” Madara stammered, and cursed himself for sounding so silly. “I mean, I was just- uh. It’s nothing.”

The man flushed. Madara stared at it, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu, and the long, cascading brown hair flowing over the man’s shoulders. “Again, I’m so sorry. I only meant to ask your name.”

Madara stared at him as a furrow developed in his brow. “My name?”

“Well, yes, your name.” A grin appeared on the taller man’s lips. And he was _quite tall,_ Madara noted. “You reminded me of someone, I knew him when we were younger and went to school together.”

The déjà vu intensified. “My…name is Uchiha Madara,” Madara said hesitantly, eyeing the man as he lit up.

“It is you!” he burst out, seizing his arms again and making him jump. He looked overjoyed, like an overgrown puppy. “It’s me, Hashirama!”

Madara’s brain came to a screeching halt. He hadn’t seen Hashirama since…how long had it been? Since they were both fourteen and Hashirama still had that stupid bowl cut?

He gaped, open-mouthed, noting in the back of his mind that Hashirama had _really_ grown into himself and become quite the example of chiseled attractiveness. Now that he looked, however, his mind was really focused on the lines of Hashirama’s face, the earnestness of his expression, how much he looked like that dumb boy Madara hadn’t seen in forever and had once been his only friend.

“H-Hashirama?” he stuttered.

Hashirama _beamed_. He yanked Madara close and wrapped his arms around him, making the scent of moss and soil fill his nose. He hesitantly set his hands on the man’s sides. “I can’t believe I found you, and completely by chance, too,” he said, releasing him and looking him up and down. “I’ve tried to find you before, but I never knew where to look.”

“Ah. Right. Well.” Madara blinked as he started to recover and gave himself a good mental shake. “My family moved around a bit. I moved back here recently to be closer to Izuna. He attends university nearby.”

“Ah, Midwestern, right?” Hashirama hadn’t stopped smiling once, and Madara wondered how he did something so exhausting. “I’m glad. We should catch up- I can buy you another coffee, to make up for that one.”

“Oh, that, you don’t have to-”

“Nonsense! I want to,” Hashirama insisted, reaching out and placing a hand on his back. It made him have to repress another jump as he was pulled towards the store. “I was going to buy something anyway.”

“All right,” Madara murmured, because he’d never really been able to deny Hashirama anything and it seemed it was still the same even after almost a decade apart.

Obito looked up when they entered the store. He had a dully exasperated look on his face, ready to complain about Madara coming back to hassle him, but he paused when he noted the odd quietness of his uncle as he came inside. There was a man he didn’t recognize, with a hand on Madara’s waist- since when did he let people touch him?- chattering at him with a smile.

 _The hell?_ he thought, tilting his head.

“Good morning,” the man greeted him with a friendly smile. “Can you get a refill of what Madara ordered a minute ago, and a plain black coffee?”

“….right.” Obito narrowed his eyes. “Name?”

“Senju Hashirama.”

He retreated to the back, staring at the man the entire time. He didn’t like this at all. Madara was an asshole, but he was the _Uchiha’s_ asshole and this odd man Obito had never seen before making him act weird was…weird.

He watched as the man turned and said something to Madara, in a lower tone he couldn’t hear, that made a slight blush take ahold of the man’s cheeks. He dumped a few shots of sugar into the plain black and scrawled _Hashbrowns_ across it without any guilt.


	2. monumental

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is an ode to every modern au ive ever read so i'm going to do Everything involving technology in those fake text creators adklsjfsldkjfd

The first time he saw Madara was not outside the coffee shop as he speed-walked to his car with a cup in hand. The first time he saw him was when he was standing in the crowd outside the park, watching with a frown as the plants he’d taken time and manpower to embed were torn up, thinking about how much more beneficial it would be for the mayor to actually put effort towards installing community gardens instead of that ugly, plain grass.

He turned when he heard Hitomi giggling. It certainly wasn’t a funny scene, so the sound caught his attention; he found her staring at something with her phone up, tapping away as she took pictures, smiling. “What is it?”

“Mayu,” Hitomi replied, not looking away from what she was looking at. “She wanted to go talk to that man over there.”

That made Tobirama look up from where he’d been typing on his phone, as well, wondering why she would let her daughter talk to a stranger.

Hashirama followed her line of sight. His gaze fell on a man kneeling in an empty section of the cobblestone outside the park’s information building, speaking to Mayu and holding something in his hand.

The first thing he noted was just how much _hair_ the man had, a veritable mane of it, cascading down his back in dark waves and curls. He didn’t look like a protestor- he had on jeans and a floral-patterned button-up, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, fingerless gloves and not a protest sign in sight.

Mayu took something from him and retreated back a few steps. Hashirama realized the man held a camera, what she must have been fascinated with, and he’d handed a smaller one to her. He set his chin on his hand as she took a picture of him and smiled, all lowered eyelids and a secretive expression and suaveness, and it made Hashirama’s cheeks warm because that smile could probably get him into bed.

He looked away when he realized Tobirama was speaking. “Anija, what do you want us to do? Refill it tomorrow night?”

“Ah, no, just-” He glanced back again but Mayu was skipping back towards them and the man had disappeared. “Make another shipment.”

That man was familiar, very familiar, and he reminded Hashirama of a boy with scruffy black hair who had shrieked and tussled with him and helped him steal a dog that spent its days chained to a tree with nothing to do once.

He kept looking at the rally, but he didn’t spot the photographer again. He resigned himself to the fact he’d missed him and went back to what he’d originally been doing.

It wasn’t until later in the day, when they were driving down the street towards Toka’s part of town, that he caught a glimpse of that same man on the sidewalk.

“Tobirama! Stop!”

The car screeched to a halt. He winced as his seatbelt tightened and caught him in the shoulder to keep him from ramming into the dash.

“What, Hashirama?” Tobirama snapped, brow furrowing when he unbuckled his seatbelt and opened his door. “What the devil are you doing?”

Hashirama slammed the door shut and leaned down to speak through the window Tobirama was opening. “I have something to go do,” he said brightly, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he itched to take off.

“Hashirama,” Tobirama growled at him in warning, “there is a body in our trunk.”

Hashirama gave him his most wheedling smile. “I’m sure you can handle it on your own! I just have to go talk to someone!” Then he was off, streaking through the pedestrians on the sidewalk, leaving Tobirama sitting there with the car running.

Tobirama stared after him with a dull expression and scowled as he rolled the window up and turned back to the road. He wasn’t a chauffeur, and if Hashirama wanted to run off and leave him to take care of this on his own he deduced that his brother could make it home on his own just fine.

* * *

 

Hashirama had tried to look for Madara, back when he was a teenager and still under the thumb of his father. Due to being as such, he hadn’t been able to allocate hardly any resources but his own Google searches. ‘Uchiha Madara’ had seemed to disappear, from his life and the world in general, and he’d spent a while heartbroken about it.

The pain had faded with time, of course, and there had been other things he’d had to be concerned about as he left adolescence behind, but he’d never really let go of the task in the back of his mind. It was pure luck that he’d run into Madara on the street and hadn’t had to use a single connection to find him.

He leaned on his chin, having abandoned his entirely too sweet coffee (he supposed the boy behind the counter had heard him incorrectly, but Hashirama didn’t mind- retail work was hell, and he was sympathetic) in lieu of staring at Madara with warm eyes as he talked about what he’d been up to.

His mother had moved them to an old family home in the country, unable to afford to live in the city anymore, and he’d slowly migrated back to city life as he grew older until eventually moving back to Konohagakure altogether.

“Anyway,” he was saying, “what do you do? Don’t just sit there and say nothing, Hashirama.”

The jeans he wore were covered in a tiny cat-faced pattern made with black thread that Hashirama hadn’t been able to see at the protest. He wondered if this was an abnormal or normal type of clothing Madara wore.

His words were scolding, but Hashirama smiled. Nothing about him seemed to have changed. “I have a flower store,” he said cheerfully, watching one of Madara’s eyebrows curl upwards.

“I’m not surprised. You always were a tree hugger. Remember that time you hugged a tree and got a rash all over your body from poison ivy?”

Hashirama’s cheeks flushed red at the reminder. He had, indeed, hugged a tree when he was fourteen when Madara called him a tree hugger to prove that it wasn’t an insult, and he’d ended up crying in the nurse’s office at the all-over rash he’d given himself as Madara cackled at him.

Madara smirked, obviously amused by the memory. “Or that time you tried to show off your oh-so-great knowledge about what plants you can eat and ended up getting your stomach pumped in the ICU.”

“C-come on! You had plenty of stupid things you did too!”

“Remember that time you tried to climb a fifty-foot tree and fell on me? You landed us _both_ in the hospital.”

“I get it,” Hashirama murmured morosely to the table. “I was a stupid kid.”

Madara started to laugh. It was a nice sound, rich and lighthearted, and it made him look up and smile when he saw the relaxed grin on his friend’s face.

Something slammed onto the table, startling them both and jerking Madara out of his laughing fit. They stared up at Obito as he stood there, expression curdled in distaste, looking for all the world like he was conversing with a dirty mole rat that had walked in and hopped into a seat.

“Here are your scones,” he said, tone full of scorn, giving Madara and then Hashirama a withering half-lidded stare before turning and storming away.

Hashirama frowned. “I’m worried that boy is having a horrible day.”

Madara snorted. “Ignore him. He’s my nephew.” Hashirama glanced over at him in sudden interest. “Well. Sort of. He’s the son of a cousin or something, but he’s everybody’s nephew. He’s probably just having a fit about something.”

“Shut it, old man!” a voice screeched from the store room.

“Is that any way to talk to a paying customer?” Madara yelled back, unheeding of anyone else in the store. A wordless shriek was all he received in return.

Hashirama smiled sheepishly and picked up one of the scones on the plate the barista had set down. “Do you two not get along?”

“No, we get along fine,” Madara said with a shrug, taking a sip of his coffee. “He just hates when Izuna and I come by with difficult orders. We talked about the family business once.”

He could have sworn he heard something break. Obito shot out of the store room, holding a box of something, face twisted with rage. “It is not the family business! Not all of us work there.”

“Worry about your freshman orientation next month instead of what I discuss with people.”

Hashirama’s eyebrows shot up as Madara snickered and Obito stormed off again. “What _is_ the family business?” he asked, making Madara pause with his cup halfway to his lips.

“…ah,” he said after a moment of silence, averting his eyes. He’d forgotten that mentioning it would, naturally, lead Hashirama to ask what it was. “Well, ah…have you ever…heard of Heavenly Delights?”

“No, what’s that?”

Madara stared at him. “Well,” he muttered, glancing down at the table. “It’s…an adult…item company.”

“Adult it- oh.” Hashirama cut himself off mid-sentence and grinned. “Do you work there too?”

“Not anymore. There was an…incident…and I decided it wasn’t for me. My cousin Hikaku runs it.”

Hashirama’s expression grew curious. “Incident? I’m sensing a story behind that,” he said, grinning in anticipation when Madara’s face began to grow red. “Come on, tell me! What did you do?”

“Why do you assume I _did_ something?” Madara complained.

A snicker burst forth out of the taller man. “It’s you we’re talking about.”

Madara bit into his bottom lip to keep from retorting and tried not to pout. He thought he looked childish when he did, even if Izuna thought it was cute. “Fine,” he sighed, looking away. “I was…running a meeting, once, and trying to talk about a product, and I…got nervous and may have said something along the lines of ‘our founder still uses this model.’”

Hashirama stared at him uncomprehendingly. “Our founder is my great grandfather,” Madara said with a wince. “He’s over ninety years old.”

A wheeze left Hashirama’s chest. He stuffed his fist into his mouth and let out a warbling sound, eyes watering as Madara glared at him. “God,” he squeaked. “I can’t believe you.”

“Shut up! I’d like to see you talk to a room full of executives about dildos with a straight face,” Madara yelled, and realized a moment after he had that everyone in the store was now staring at him. He sunk into his seat and turned even redder as a few tears leaked out of Hashirama’s eyes.

“I don’t have to sit here and be subject to this mockery,” he sniffed crankily, standing and snatching up his coffee cup.

“Nooo, hold on!” Hashirama cried, wrapping his arms around Madara’s hips as he took a step, nearly falling out of his seat as he did. It sent a pleasant tingle up his spine. “I don’t have a way to contact you!” he said into Madara’s back.

Madara rolled his eyes. He ignored the feeling of warmth spreading from the places Hashirama’s skin contacted his body. He was so rarely touched, there were few he trusted to do so, but it felt nostalgic to have Hashirama touch him. He remembered when they were boys and he would take Madara by the hand with no hesitation and run off into the woods with him. “Send me a messenger pigeon,” he replied airily. “Remember when you tried to train one?”

Hashirama wilted against him. “You could have helped instead of sat there laughing at me,” he pouted.

“For one, it was the wrong breed, and two, homing pigeons don’t work like you thought they did.” Madara let out a sigh and took out his phone. He should know; he’d had to take care of an injured one at the Uchiha’s bird sanctuary for a month last year. “Do you have a pen?”

He could hear Hashirama’s silent pout as he started walking. The man let himself be pulled out of his chair and slumped his forehead against Madara’s shoulder as they went. His arms were still around Madara’s abdomen and he tried not to dwell on how good it felt.

“I’ll remember it,” he insisted, and Madara rolled his eyes before listing his number off.

He’d reached his car and Hashirama still hadn’t let go. “I have to drive,” he said blandly, taking a sip of his coffee.

“But I missed youuuu,” Hashirama whined into his hair. “When can I see you again?”

Madara pretended to think for a moment. Might as well not look too desperate, even if his will to get in his car and drive off was dribbling away as Hashirama held onto him. “Text me tonight and ask. I should leave before my car gets too hot.”

“Why? Is the air conditioner broken?”

“Has been for a month,” Madara shrugged, not seeing the way Hashirama’s eyes glinted. “It has some…issues, but it’s drivable. That’s all that matters.”

Hashirama let go of him- he stamped down on the disappointment that welled up- letting his hands linger on Madara’s sides. He seemed reluctant to let him go.

The contact, from anyone else, would have felt uncomfortable, but coming from Hashirama, it only felt familiar, in a way.

“All right,” he sighed. “Drive safely.”

Madara nodded at him and walked over to his door, stepping down into his car and watching Hashirama retreat a few paces and smile as he beamed at him and waved. He rolled his eyes and lifted his hand in a vague gesture back as he pulled away from the curb.

He knew he couldn’t sit there having coffee with the man forever- he did have some miscellaneous work to work on- but something in him felt disappointed at leaving his presence. It was…odd, yet it didn’t feel odd simultaneously. It had been- god, it had been forever since he’d seen Hashirama, but it still felt as warm between them as it had ten years ago.

He would probably feel even more disappointed if he didn’t get to see Hashirama again. They hadn’t been reunited for much over an hour and he could already feel his attachment resurfacing. He could already feel himself wishing he was in Hashirama’s presence again.

 _God_ , Hashirama had always done weird things to him.

Perhaps…it would be nice having Hashirama around again, when they wouldn’t have to stop.

It was probably a little bit pathetic, he thought, but he hoped the man contacted him sooner rather than later. Hopefully he felt like Madara did.

* * *

 

“Madara,” Mito said upon answering her phone, sounding delighted. She was probably amused every time _Curly Porcupine_ flashed across her screen. “How are you?”

“I met Hashirama again,” Madara blurted out, knowing it was rude to start off without even asking how her honeymoon was going but needing to get the knowledge off his chest. Mito wouldn’t mind anyway; she knew he was happy for her, having photographed her wedding free of charge and ordered variously sized prints at his own expense to hang around her house.

Mito’s voice took on a slightly excited tone. “ _The_ Hashirama you told me so much about?”

Madara didn’t think he’d told her _that_ much, but he supposed he had rambled on for quite awhile during that conversation when he’d told her about his old friend that part of him still missed. “He saw me getting coffee,” he said, deciding to leave out the part about him dropping said coffee and probably staining the man’s shoes. “He hasn’t changed a bit.”

“I’m sensing a but.”

“Well- obviously he’s- changed physically,” Madara explained, feeling awkward as he sat down on his couch and put the dinner he’d heated up on his coffee table. “He’s…” Really, there was no reason to lie to her; Mito had seen him coming off thirty-two hours of studying with ramen on his breath in college with his shirt on backwards and vomit stains on his pants. “He’s gorgeous, Mito.”

He could practically sense her perk up in interest. She’d been witness to two of his last disastrous dates, one of which had dissolved when the restaurant they were in had an incident with fire in the kitchen and one of which devolved when his date had decided to nitpick his choice in career.

“Go on.”

“God.” Madara stared at his television, playing some mindless commercial about cat-themed blenders, thinking back on his meeting. Hashirama was so gorgeous it had startled him into dropping his coffee. “He’s so tall. At least six feet. His hair is so long now- I don’t even know how he’s the same person who had that dumb bowl cut. It goes all the way down to his hips, Mito, his hips. I wish I could have touched it. And- the rest of him is easy on the eyes, too. That’s not even the worst part.”

“Which is?” Mito asked him, sounding gleeful.

Madara let out a groan. “He hasn’t changed at all! He’s still that dumb kid that- that-”

“Makes you feel all bubbly and cute inside?”

“Shut up. He…” Madara trailed off, unsure of how to describe how Hashirama made him feel. “It’s like we’re still best friends. He…said that he missed me.” He stared at his screen as the woman in the commercial started shoving entire bell peppers into the blender to showcase its cutting power. “I think I missed him more than I thought I did.”

Mito was quiet for a moment. “Did you have a crush on him?” she asked, sounding curious.

“God,” Madara replied, a little dismayed, thinking of the time he’d anxiously picked much too many flowers from the woods to give to Hashirama and landed them both in the nurse’s office with a rash from something poisonous. “I think I did.”

A laugh bubbled out of her throat. Sulking, Madara sunk back into his couch cushions and moved his dinner to his lap, aimlessly poking at it with his fork as the commercial ended and transitioned into the news. They were still going on about the gardens that had popped up, though now in addition to that, there was apparently a line of trees that had surfaced at random across the gateway to the mayor’s driveway.

“He’s supposed to text me tonight,” he muttered, dragging a hand down his face. “He owns a flower store. Do you think that makes him too busy to spend time together very often?”

“If he was out and getting coffee on a Monday morning, I doubt his schedule is completely bogged down.”

“What should I ask him to do? What do people even do for fun? Go the park? A movie?”

“What did you two do when you were kids?”

“We…screwed around in the woods a lot.”

She chuckled. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, but going to the park should be fine.”

Madara let out a slow sigh and slumped further into his cushions. He changed the channel to some unintelligible soap opera channel that was easy to ignore. “I suppose. How’s the honeymoon?” he asked, figuring he should at least ask before they hung up.

Mito let out a soft sigh. “It’s better than I could have imagined. I haven’t left this apartment for four days. I don’t know how Toka afforded it, but it’s so peaceful. There’s _so much_ cake in the fridge.” During their junior year Mito had gone a little stir-crazy in the dorms and bought an entire chocolate cake from a bakery to eat by herself. Madara had returned to their room and found her passed out in it, snoring, and he’d tripped over the pile of laundry in their floor laughing too hard and hadn’t even disrupted her nap. He still had the pictures from that.

Madara smirked. “I’ll bet you’ve been getting plenty of another type of cake.”

“You have _no idea_. I swear, she’s just so…strong…and flexible… and her strap game is _immaculate._ I love her so much, just, every time she-”

 _“Every time she what?”_ another voice asked, muffled.

Mito let out a shriek. There was a thump that told Madara she’d sent her phone flying, followed by the sound of Toka’s laughter.

Mito started to laugh through her startled screeching, yelling out something about calling him back. Smirking to himself, Madara hung up and set his phone down to eat.

He’d gotten halfway through his meal when it buzzed. He most certainly did not nearly drop his plate in a rush to flip it over.

He…wasn’t actually free for lunch tomorrow, but he could easily reschedule what he’d had planned.

He snorted. Hashirama really had not changed a bit- he was still as much of a dork as ever.

The television blared as the quiet soap opera show cut for a commercial break and a loud informercial started roaring about a cat-themed garden hose. Madara jumped, flipping his plate onto the floor, and nearly sent both his phone and the remote flying in his flailing. He swore and dove for the remote control to turn the volume down.

* * *

 

“You know,” an irritated voice said as its owner pulled open the supply closet he was hiding in, “if you want to sneak up on me, announcing it on your public social media is counterintuitive.”

“You check my social media?” Izuna retorted cheerfully, making Tobirama’s eyes roll back as he groaned. He took ahold of Izuna’s arm and yanked him out of the closet, shutting and locking it with a key from the keyring hanging from his hip.

“You know you’re not allowed in there.”

“There wasn’t a sign,” Izuna returned, innocent, fluttering his eyelashes. “I just got so confused, I’m so sorry, mister aquarium keeper.”

“I’m not a keeper, I’m a safety officer,” Tobirama said with a twitch, folding his arms as they stood there in the hallway with gently waning blue-tinted light shining in from the tank that spanned one side of the room. “That means I keep idiots like you out of our off-limits areas, and make sure you don’t get your hand bitten off.”

Izuna pretended to gasp as he clapped his hands to his face, widening his eyes dramatically. “You mean one of these big gentle fishies could hurt me? I don’t believe you!” The twitching got worse. Izuna smiled. “But I’ll not worry you anymore, mister safety officer. I’ll be right on my way.”

He turned and took a larger step than necessary, walking with a long and exaggerated swinging gate towards the end of the hall. Behind him, he heard Tobirama let out a pained noise. He could have sworn he heard the man mutter _oh my god._ “What are those.”

Izuna paused and swung around, preening. “If you were on my twitter, I assumed you would have seen my new profile picture,” he sniffed, leaning one heel on his shoes at an angle. They were the most obnoxious pair of heels he could find, and if not for the fact they were stilettos, they would have looked more at home on a blue-footed booby bird. “Aren’t they fabulous?”

Tobirama dragged a hand down his face. He looked as though he was regretting his choice in career. “Just stay out of the closets.”

“Oh, you don’t have to ask me to do _that_. I’ve been out of the closet since I was eleven!”

Another groan. Izuna smiled prettily and turned around, strutting away and looking fully confident in his ridiculous blue shoes, skintight jean shorts with fringe, round sunhat, and turtleneck tank top with a heart cutout in the chest. He pulled out his phone on his way out of the jellyfish exhibit to text while he walked; though he loved hassling Tobirama, he was also there for the attractions themselves.

The aquarium’s halls were all a deep brown that left it feeling shadowy and dramatic in the indoor exhibits; there were lines of soft lights on the base molding in each room, and Izuna always liked to stand in the shadows in front of the tanks and wash the sharks swim past.

He was rounding the corner into the hall that led into the tropical bird exhibits when he saw his brother, standing at one of the information stations against the far wall, reading a pamphlet and illuminated by the station’s light. He would have called out to him immediately, if not for the man standing next to him.

He was tall- taller than Madara by at least a few inches- dressed in simple clothes and earthy tones, standing next to Madara with long umber hair tied in a loose ponytail near the base of his neck and one hand on his brother’s back. It was a miracle Madara was letting anyone touch him at all, probably, let alone so low.

Izuna jerked back around the corner and bent down, staring at them from behind the wall with wide, interested eyes.

“-scarlet ibis,” his brother was rambling on excitedly, pointing to something in the pamphlet. “-didn’t have one last time I was here, but they have a pair now-”

Izuna couldn’t believe it. The unknown man nodded and said something- Izuna didn’t hear; he probably could have, but he was a bit distracted fumbling to get his phone out- at smiled as he walked towards one of the hallways with a hand still on Madara’s back. It had drifted even lower, slightly to the side, almost to his hip, more comfortable for walking together. And Madara just _let him do it!_

He put his phone away and darted towards the hall they’d gone down, bouncing excitedly as he set out to figure out just what the case really was.


End file.
